Виктория Холт - The Road to Compiegne

‘Yes, Sire. He writes now and then.’

‘It is a pleasure to remind ourselves that we have one lunatic less at Court.’

The Marquise forced herself to laugh lightly, but she was disappointed. She had hoped to put many honours in the way of her old friend, François Marie Arouet de Voltaire; alas, genius though she considered him to be, he lacked those manners which would make him acceptable at Versailles.

‘I think Your Majesty will enjoy the play.’

‘I am sure of it. You, my dear Marquise, are taking a part?’

‘An important one. But do not ask me to talk of it. I would have it a surprise for Your Majesty.’

He took her hand and lightly laid his lips to it. He was thinking how delightful she was. She always talked good sense. No matter what topic he raised he could be sure that she would throw herself wholeheartedly into it. But she rarely suggested a topic. She waited for his lead. She was a wonderful woman. If only she were a more satisfactory bedfellow, she would be perfect.

He was finding his glances straying very often nowadays; and he would feel faintly annoyed with himself. The Marquise was such a good woman, and he did not want to give her enemies the satisfaction they were looking for.

The Marquise was now smiling at him tenderly, giving not the slightest sign of the alarm she was feeling. During the five years she had been the King’s mistress she had studied every mood of his so that she was often able to read his thoughts.

His next words terrified her. ‘My dear Marquise, I am a little anxious about your health. Can you assure me that you have consulted Quesnay on this matter which is of the utmost importance to me?’

She laughed. None would have guessed that she had begun to feel sick with the apprehension which had seized her. Then tears came suddenly into her eyes. ‘I am so deeply touched,’ she said, ‘because Your Majesty is concerned for my health. Yet, my dearest, you will forgive me if I laugh. I never felt better.’

‘I thought, my dear, that last night you were a little tired . . . a little too easily tired.’

‘Nay, my dear Sire, not I. But do you remember that frightening occasion when you were taken ill in my bed, and Quesnay said that you must take care? Forgive me, Louis, but I cannot forget that occasion and often it sets me trembling.’

‘Death!’ murmured the King. ‘Who knows how near any of us are to it?’ He shook his head mournfully, and the beautiful blue eyes held hers quizzically. He never seemed to tire. Was that what he was telling her?

She smothered a cough and said: ‘What a melancholy subject, and death is far, far from us. We are young yet.’

‘Let us hope that it is far away,’ said Louis.

‘Oh, but I meant to make Your Majesty laugh, and here we are on this melancholy subject. Sire, have you heard of Richelieu’s latest love affair?’

‘No, my dear,’ said Louis. ‘But tell me. The fellow is so outrageous. How does he manage at his age to remain like an eager boy? Tell me that.’

The Marquise laughed lightly. ‘We should remember, Sire,’ she said, ‘that these stories of his prowess are invariably related by himself. This could mean that the powers of Son Excellence are even more amazing after the event than during it.’

Now the King was laughing with her, the Marquise was relieved.

She remembered other scandals with which to amuse Louis, and when he left her he was a great deal brighter than when he had come. It was often thus. He would mount the stairs to her apartment in a melancholy mood, and retire with raised spirits, very often smiling to himself on recalling some amusing anecdote.

Left alone, the Marquise lay down on a couch and tried to suppress the cough which she had been fighting during the interview with the King.

As she lay there the door of the apartment opened and a woman tiptoed in.

‘Is that you, Hausset?’ asked the Marquise.

‘It is I, Madame.’

‘And you were in your little alcove scribbling away while the King was here?’

‘Within reach, should you have needed me, Madame.’

The Marquise smiled rather wanly; there was no need to keep up appearances with her confidential woman who was also her good friend.

Madame du Hausset threw herself on her knees and took the hand of Madame de Pompadour. ‘You’ll kill yourself. You’ll kill yourself,’ she declared passionately.

‘Poor Hausset, then you will be dismissed from the Palace; and how will you then continue with your memoirs? I suppose you could continue with them, though they would not be so interesting, would they? Now you can write about the King and your mistress who is also the King’s. I wonder for how long that will be.’

‘That’s no way to talk,’ said Madame du Hausset.

‘No way indeed. But I am aware of it all the time, you see.

Those people at the toilette . . . did they think I could not read their thoughts?’

‘This dieting of yours, Madame – it is no good to you,’ said Madame du Hausset. ‘Nothing you eat can make you a match for the King. Few women could be.’

‘I fear, Hausset, that I am not a very sensual woman. I must tell you something. There have been nights when the King has slept on the couch in my room. What does that mean?’

‘It means that he has a great regard for you, Madame.’

‘He says, “I will not disturb you.” What does that mean?’

‘That he considers your comfort.’

‘For how long, Hausset, does such a man continue to consider the comfort of his mistress?’

‘It would depend on how deep was his affection for her. Can Monsieur Quesnay do nothing for you?’

‘He has given me drugs and pills, but I remain . . . as has been said . . . as cold as my name.’

‘Then, Madame, take my advice. Give up truffles and diets and doctors’ pills. Eat heartily and what you fancy. I feel sure that will bring you good health more quickly than anything; and with health will come that warmth which the King asks of you.’

‘My dearest Hausset,’ said the Marquise, ‘I am glad to have you with me. I can speak to you as to no one else.’

‘Madame, you know I am your friend.’

‘Then pity me, Hausset. The life I lead is not to be envied. Such moments as this are rare, as you know. I have never a minute to myself. I must think constantly of my duties. There is no rest. You should pity me, Hausset, from the bottom of your heart.’

Madame du Hausset nodded slowly. ‘I pity you, Madame la Marquise. I do pity you with all my heart. Everyone else at the Court, in Paris, in France, envies you. But I who see most have only pity for you.’

‘My good Hausset, it gives me great comfort to have you with me and to think of you in your alcove room scribbling away concerning the day’s doings. Do I figure much in those memoirs of yours? Does the King?’

‘Very much, Madame. It could not be otherwise.’

‘No. I suppose not. But what am I thinking of? I must change my dress. I am to entertain the King at Bellevue this afternoon. Come . . .’

She was seized with a fit of coughing which she could not suppress. She held her handkerchief to her mouth, and when she had finished coughing lay back exhausted, while Madame du Hausset took the bloodstained muslin from her hand.

Neither of them mentioned it; it was a secret which so far they kept between them; but both knew that such a secret could not be perpetually kept.

The Marquise was suddenly gay. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘There is no time to lose. I must be at Bellevue in time to greet His Majesty.’

When he left the Marquise Louis went to the petits appartements which he had created for himself round the Cour des Cerfs. It was here that he could enjoy solitude and the pursuit of his hobbies; here he felt that he could achieve one of his ambitions, which was to separate Louis de Bourbon from Louis XV of France.

He wished now that he could cast off his mood of melancholy. Life seemed to have nothing of real interest to offer him. It was a wearying round of ceremony and adulation; of brilliant entertainments which were so like one another that he could not remember which was which.

He was forty years old – not such a great age; and yet he felt that life had nothing fresh to offer him. He was jaded and there were very few people who could rouse him from his melancholy. The Marquise was certainly one; Richelieu was another; his daughter Adelaide could amuse him because she was such a wild and unaccountable creature; his daughter Anne-Henriette could touch his pity because she was so fragile and as melancholy as himself.

Poor Anne-Henriette, she still mourned for her lost lover, Charles Edward Stuart. It would have been folly to have allowed such a marriage, yet he could not help feeling a twinge of conscience every time he saw Anne-Henriette. It was for this reason that he avoided seeing her; he hated to have his conscience stirred.

Adelaide interested him more nowadays. She was eighteen and still pretty; it was amusing to listen to her talking of State matters. She really believed that she had a great influence over her father. Perhaps that was why she was so fond of him. She was indeed fond, and no one dared criticise him in her presence, so he had heard. If she suspected any of doing so, she would scream in anger: ‘Take that creature away to the dungeons!’

At Court people were beginning to wonder whether the violent and vivacious Adelaide was mentally unbalanced. They were asking whether the King intended all his daughters to remain unmarried. There was Anne-Henriette now twenty-three, Victoire seventeen, Sophie sixteen, and Louise-Marie thirteen, all – as eighteen-year-old Adelaide herself – marriageable, and yet the King did not stir himself to make marriages for them.